Our Choice of the
Franciscan Model
of Healthcare
Our parent company, San Damiano Corporation, takes its name from this sanctuary.
Inspired by the
Mayo Clinic and St Francis
Our choice of the Franciscan model of healthcare was inspired by leading medical institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, which has consistently maintained its position at or near the top of hospital rankings in the United States. This is not a spiritual statement alone, it is a clinical and operational one. The model works.
What is the Franciscan Model?
The Franciscan model we adopt at SD Care requires us to be perceptive to the real needs of people. We must be willing to confront the experience of suffering in those we serve. We must acknowledge that suffering is often not only physical but also psychological and existential, proceeding from a sense of loneliness, of loss of meaning and self-worth. This is especially evident in those with chronic illnesses, the elderly, and those approaching death.
We would point you to a beautiful article written by a medical doctor and Franciscan priest “Awakened by Love: Saint Francis of Assisi as Model for the Church’s Mission to Health Care and Charitable Service” — by Paschal M. Corby OFM Conv. MBBS, STD.[1] It speaks of the cathartic moment of St Francis’ conversion when he embraced and kissed a leper at a time when leprosy was regarded with profound fear. That single act of radical compassion changed the direction of his life and became the foundation of a healthcare tradition that endures to this day.
“I felt a burning need to bring back with me a memory of the sense of inner peace and joy I felt walking in the footsteps of St Francis in Assisi. He had pierced my heart with a need to help others like he did and transformed my mind to look for God’s beauty in everything that surrounded me.”
Francis Mirandah — Founder & CEO, SD Care AgencySaint Francis of Assisi, “small yet strong in the love of God,”[2] emerges as a paradigm of the Church’s untiring mission of care toward the poor and vulnerable. The Franciscan model has inspired some of the most respected healthcare institutions in the world including, closer to home, the Mount Alvernia Hospital in Guildford, which was founded and run by Franciscan nuns for decades.
Leprosy in the Middle Ages
While leprosy is not in itself integral to this discussion, a consideration of its social effects in the medieval world helps contextualise the nature of Saint Francis’s response. Leprosy (Hansen’s disease) is a chronic granulomatous infection that particularly affects the skin and peripheral nerves, causing deformity and neuropathy. Transmitted via droplets, the responsible bacilli are not highly contagious yet throughout history the mere hint of contagion has sent a wave of fear through societies.[3]
More than a disease, leprosy was a life sentence to exclusion. In medieval Europe, lepers were forbidden to enter cities or public spaces, forbidden to touch anything without gloves, and required to identify themselves by unique dress or the sound of a bell or clapper. They were, in the words of contemporaries, the “walking dead” of their time, their removal from society associated with a funeral rite that rendered them dead to the world.[4]
Be dead to the world and again living to God.
Words spoken to lepers upon banishment from medieval cities — Sarum Manual, 14th century [4]Francis’s Conversion
As a young man, Francis naturally accepted this separation. In his Testament he attests: “when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers.”[5] Even at the sight of their dwellings some miles off, he would cover his nose with his hands.[6]
Then, in one of the decisive moments of his life, Francis was confronted by a leper on the road. Instead of turning away as was his custom, he was moved to embrace and kiss him. “And suddenly, as he kissed the lacerated flesh of the creature who was the most abject, the most hated, the most scorned of all human beings, he was flooded with a wave of emotion, one that shut out everything around him, one that he would remember even on his death bed.”[7]
From that moment, the direction of Francis’s life changed entirely. He began to visit leper hospitals, give alms, and care for those he had once abhorred. “He washed their feet, bandaged sores, drew pus from wounds, and wiped away filth.”[8] He joined them in their isolation, willingly embraced their rejection, and did not care that others despised him for it.
In time he demanded the same of his followers, exhorting them to be joyful in living “among people considered of little value and looked down upon, among the poor and the powerless, the sick and the lepers, and the beggars by the wayside.”[9] The leprosarium became a type of novitiate for the first Franciscan friars “the indispensable condition for being accepted into the Fraternity.”[10]
The Divine Initiative
What explains the dramatic nature of Francis’s change of heart? In his Testament, Francis reflects on this pivotal moment: “for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I showed mercy to them.”[5] According to Francis, the meeting was no chance encounter. God willed it as a means of drawing close to him. The initiative was God’s.
Pope Benedict XVI referred to this moment as a truly religious experience, “commanded by the initiative of God’s grace and love” not merely a philanthropic gesture or social conversion, but a moment of true religious conversion in which God was both reaching out to Francis and enabling him to respond.[11]
Awakened by Love
The great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar illustrates the awakening of the human subject to love through the analogy of a mother’s smile directed toward her child: “After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives her child’s smile in response. She has awakened love in the heart of her child.”[12] Von Balthasar suggests that through his gaze upon humanity which is itself love, God awakens love in the human heart through a similar process.
This is also the basic tenet of Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus caritas est: God is love. “He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has ‘loved us first,’ love can also blossom as a response within us.”[13]
What This Means at SD Care Today
Pope Francis speaks of the Gospel imperative “to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction.”[2] He warns against the temptation toward a privatised faith, a purely spiritual service without genuine human presence. Christian charity moves forward to those who suffer, boldly takes the initiative, and goes out to others.
As Benedict XVI reflects, “human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern.”[13] They need affirmation and comfort. They need love. This is why, in addition to professional competence, Benedict speaks of the need for a “formation of the heart” an encounter with God in Christ which awakens love and opens one’s spirit to others.
Healthcare workers must be willing to confront the experience of suffering in those whom they serve. They must acknowledge that suffering is often not only physical but also psychological and existential, proceeding from a sense of loneliness, of loss of meaning and self-worth. This is especially evident in those with chronic illnesses, the elderly, and those approaching death, the very people SD Care serves every day.
The Values That Guide Every Visit
Dignity for every person
Every person deserves the greatest dignity and respect, regardless of their condition. This is not a policy, it is the operating principle behind every care plan.
Seeing the whole person
Suffering is not only physical. It is psychological and existential. Our carers are trained to recognise and respond to the complete human being in front of them.
Humility before service
Francis washed the feet of lepers. True service begins with genuine humility, an absence of condescension, a willingness to simply be present with another person.
Love as a practical act
Christian charity flows from a heart genuinely moved, not reduced to ideology or task-completion. That is what we look for in every carer we employ.
An Instrument of Peace
The prayer attributed to St Francis is, for us, a mission statement. It is a description of what we try to bring into every home we enter across Surrey and London, not because we are required to, but because we believe that care, when it is real, works exactly this way.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy.
The Prayer of St Francis of AssisiJ. Alan Paton once wrote: “St Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the Creation, and that the greatest use we could make of our lives was to ask to be made a healer of it.” That is, in its simplest form, what SD Care Agency exists to do.
Guided by Values That Matter
Learn more about the history and founding mission behind SD Care and why our approach to care goes far beyond the visit.
References & Further Reading
This article draws on the academic paper “Awakened by Love: Saint Francis of Assisi as Model for the Church’s Mission to Health Care and Charitable Service” by Paschal M. Corby OFM Conv. (published in Christian Bioethics, 2018), alongside primary Franciscan sources and papal encyclicals.